


hues

by Random_ag



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Minor Character Death, Weird Color-Feelings Association Hours, depressed thoughts, did you think she would escape it, niamh is not immune to angst, you fool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 00:15:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18510028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: It’s grey and purple, grey and purple.Most of the time, it’s just some grey and a whole lot of purple.Moving her hands and feet as they recoil and shoot, recoil and shoot.





	hues

First came purple.

So strong, so deep, so dark, so violent.

A fist in the groin of a lying priest, the rejection of faith in a temple of God. And then the fights, the bites, the kicks, the bricks, the broken bones and missing teeth and large bruises of those who dared make her grandmother cry.

 

How can a girl of six years of age be so angry?

Nobody knew, and Seamus worried about his granddaughter’s knuckles when she punched adults straight in the jaw.

 

Fanny O’Flannel wore green dresses and had eyes like the sky tinted with mint.

She loved the green of pastures, of young buds, of new grass.

It was the same green among which she was buried.

 

The same green that grabbed Niamh’s ankles.

 

She laid in bed as ivy grew at a steady pace all over her like a blanket of sadness woven by her tears, weighing her down to force her back into the ground. So closer to her tomb, so far away from her sweet Nanna’s star.

 

How can a girl of eleven years grieve so much?

Nobody knew, and her parents watched her leave for overseas to try get a job where ivy had a hard time growing.

 

How does it feel?

 

To be a puppet in your own body?

 

To be moved by weights and pistons inside of you, manouvered by colors and emotions you can’t control as they switch constantly, fighting for power, like a dozen yelling brats trying to play with just one toy.

 

Trying your hardest to fight them back and contain them, only for them to get worse and erupt, leaving you physically and mentally exhausted.

 

Having eyes clouded with orange worry and neck chained by pink fear.

 

Finding calm in a sea of scarlet fire where tired yellow sinks.

 

Getting suddenly overwhelmed by an excited white.

 

Knowing happiness is blue, all shades of it.

 

And pain is grey, getting greyer with every hit landed, covering entire arms and legs and stomaches and heads as the bastard of the day spills liquid static from his mouth, particles of black and white so small they are indistinguishable.

 

It’s grey and purple, grey and purple.

Most of the time, it’s just some grey and a whole lot of purple.

Moving her hands and feet as they recoil and shoot, recoil and shoot.

Every now and then yellow arrives too and makes her head spin and eyes hurt.

 

They’re so volatile, these colors.

There can be red in the morning, only to turn purple after a second; and after seven hours of uninterrupted anger streaked maybe by other timid hues, suddenly something small happens, and there’s only space for blue.

Lucidity is rare.

She should be able to count the times she’s seen the world through unfiltered eyes on her right hand’s fingers.

 

Should, because she forgot the times when it actually happened.

 

It’s so seldom.

 

It feels so seldom.

 

If she lays in bed and stares at the ceiling and does her hardest not to think

( _which is so hard to do when everything deserves a thought whether it’s work or weather or sky or pavement or tree or cement or a smell or a texture or a song, and to every thought there’s has an emotion attached and to every emotion a color and every color takes over again and again and again without resting_ ),

maybe she can tear the colors away from her pupils; experience the world without feelings; just.

 

Breathe.

 

( _There’s no color to breath._ )

( _It’s just invisible._ )

 

( _Transparent._ )

 

( _Transparent feels empty._ )

( _It’s good._ )

( _Being empty._ )

( _After so much fullness._ )

( _It has an air of freedom._ )

( _Of rest._ )

( _It distracts her as she falls asleep._ )

 

( _Sleep is black._ )

 

( _She doesn’t dream often._ )

 

( _What should she dream of, anyway._ )

 

When certain dates roll around, the ivy grows back.

 

It starts down at her soles and rises slowly through the day, reaching her thigh, then waist, then wrists.

 

It dies by the end of the evening, when she’s out looking at the stars. It’s washed away by a thousand tears rolling down her elbows.

 

She learned quite a while ago that no matter what the soil, ivy will grow.

Merciless and slow, but it will.

As distant from the source as it may be, it will.

 

Crawling slowly into her through her mouth and eyes, clawing serenely and compassionately to her flesh until she’s covered completely, inside and out, by the green of her grandmother’s prettiest dress, the one she wears in her coffin.

 

Nothing will keep it from growing.

Nothing.

 

So she has to live with it.

 

With a body where she has barely any agency.

 

With the mixture of purple and grey just below her eyes.

 

She can’t see it.

 

( _Of course she can’t._ )

 

But she does feel it.

 

( _Like she feels everything else._ )

 

And sometimes.

 

( _Just sometimes._ )

 

Niamh passes a hand on the octopus drawn in the space between her shoulders, and feels like she’s hiding something.

 

( _Something like a bruise._ )

( _A gigantic, grey stain on her cadaveric skin._ )

( _One that never changes, unlike the hues coloring her in her mind._ )

 

( _All that remains of the painful impact of a shooting star with the ocean._ )

 

Her skin is unscathed beneath it.


End file.
